Women Occupy

There’s something unique about Occupy Harrisburg in Pennsylvania – this capital city is bankrupt. The NBC Nightly News had mentioned Harrisburg’s financial problems, and I paused over dinner, lost in the magnitude of so many bad business decisions, greed at their core. Now, there was no money to maintain the riverfront park – residents organized with their own clippers and rakes to ready it for autumn.  A sinkhole over century-old brick sewers had closed Third Street for weeks, and a second sinkhole blocks away had two sawhorses and a mangled orange cone for warning and no prospects for a timely repair. And steps descending to the Susquehanna River had caved in, pulling a streetlight down with them. The city cordoned it off with crime tape, literally the cheapest response possible. I had slipped under the tape to stand on the mangled steps, to find my balance on their tilt and peer under at the muddy cave. It was scary. Our city was washing out from beneath.